‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Team on Question M’Benga Needed to Ask, Una’s Trouble With Ortegas

[Warning: Contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Episode 3 “Shuttle to Kenfori.”]

To try to save Batel (Melanie Scrofano) from the Gorn infection, Pike (Anson Mount) and M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) head down to Kenfori, in a no-fly zone, to retrieve a chimera blossom and run into some serious trouble. Zombies? Just the start.

The Klingons invaded Kenfori at the start of the war, and after the war, both sides agreed to give it up. Pike and M’Benga end up fighting not only, for lack of a better word, zombies, but also Klingons, including one who was tracking the doctor for killing Rah. She was his daughter and had wanted to assassinate her father to restore their house’s name. Pike said that M’Benga acted in self-defense, and when the Klingon asked the doctor to confirm, he told her that he did assassinate him. He’d also do it again because he was a mass murderer. He lied to protect the monster still inside him. Once back on the Enterprise, M’Benga checked if Pike was going to turn him in. The short answer: No. The long answer: No, also because their mission officially didn’t exist.

“I think it’s a question he needed to ask. I think after such an act, you can’t sleep perhaps, and sometimes you can, but ultimately, what are the ramifications of that? And there’s one person who could absolutely have an impact, and that’s Pike there,” Olusanmokun tells TV Insider. “So I think he got enough courage to finally ask him, what are you going to do about this? So yeah, it was a momentous decision to ask, but it was also a very necessary question to ask.”

Their conversation ended with Pike also making sure that his friend knew that he was not a monster, just a man. That was important for M’Benga to hear.

“I think he beats himself up, but I think in his best times he also realizes that it’s a puzzle, that there’s a better part of him. He says, ‘Am I a monster?’ But I think he suspects he’s not,” says Olusanmokun. “But it’s also good to hear a dear friend say it.”

According to executive producer Akiva Goldsman, that last part was most important for M’Benga to hear. “They had that chemistry on the pilot,” adds executive producer Henry Alonso Myers. “Honestly, every time we don’t show them together, I’m like, we should show them together more.”

While Pike and M’Benga were on Kenfori, Una (Rebecca Romijn) was in command on board the Enterprise — and she had to deal with insubordination from Ortegas (Melissa Navia). The pilot continued to struggle in the aftermath of her near-death experience when she and others were taken by the Gorn, and so she forced Una’s hand in following her plan when it came to the Klingons. Una pulled her from the duty roster for two weeks and told her to report to the warrant officer for chain of command training.

“I think dealing with her as a captain and seeing Una in the role of command, having to face a crew member who’s insubordinate, it’s something that’s actually going to continue,” teases Romijn. “We’re close to the end of Season 4, and I’ve seen it, without any spoilers, continue to play out a little bit in Una’s relationship with Ortegas. But I think it’s interesting to see the type of captain that Una would be in that scenario and see Una come down on a crew member who’s insubordinate. But yeah, it’s an evolving story.”

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Thursdays, Paramount+